So God saw a Zombie Movie
by ShadowWeasel
Summary: I think we all knew that this was going to end badly. My name is Kyon. Me, Koizumi, and Nagato are all survivors of the zombie apocalypse, courtesy of one Haruhi Suzumiya. How did we not think that all those movies and games would come back to haunt us? Now, Mikuru's off in the future somewhere, and we're stuck in Japan with Haruhi as the last four people alive.
1. Chapter 1

_Haruhi stared dramatically into the blood-red sunset, her rifle slung over her right shoulder. The noise of undead hordes echoed across the tarnished landscape, playing a hellish symphony of doom as her theme song. _

_"Okay, team," she said, turning to her companions. "We've got one shot at this. Mikuru needs that antidote, and it's somewhere in that zombie-infested city."_

Roll the dice. Koizumi's turn.

_The battle-hardened warrior at Haruhi's left grinned. "We'll get that medicine. Don't you worry." _

Roll again. Damn it. My turn.

_"But how will we ever defeat the zombies?" Kyon asked. "There are simply _far _too many of them."_

Roll. Nagato.

_"With our combination of firepower, Itsuki Koizumi's charisma skill, Miss Suzumiya's leadership boost, and the odds of landing critical attacks, we will-..."_

"Yuki! You're not supposed to talk about the game inside the game!"

_"We will win with the power of teamwork."_

"That's better! Mikuru, your turn."

_The redheaded, bulletproof-bikini-wearing beauty at the rear of the group cowered in fear. "B-... but I don't want to fight the zombies!"_

"Mikuru, you're dying of zombie-itis! Act sicker!"

_"I-I mean," she swooned, "oh, I just couldn't bear to fight another horde of zombies!"_

Haruhi grinned and swiped up the dice off the game board. "This is fun," she declared, tossing the die across the table and gaining a random number of charisma points or something. "It's like a real zombie apocalypse!"

"It is quite interesting," Koizumi admitted, smiling stupidly.

"It's too scary," Miss Asahina whined, hugging herself tightly, on the verge of tears. If she didn't look so damned cute when she did that, I might have felt a little more sorry.

"Quiet," our leader shushed, putting a finger to her lips. "It's my turn to talk. We're going to storm the city."

Okay, allow me to explain. My name is Kyon. What you're seeing here is called a role-playing game, and the players in this game are none other than your friendly-neighborhood SOS Brigade. Suzumiya was going through a zombie phase. Don't ask me where she got the board game, because I honestly don't know...

"Kyon!" she snapped, "Pay attention. We're attacking the city."

I sighed and reluctantly reassumed my role.

_"Look out," Kyon cried, hefting his machine gun into a firing position. He squeezed the trigger, and amber explosions painted the drab and barren horizon. _

I rolled the dice again. Everyone looked at the numbers quizzically. Except for the human calculator with purple hair, who announced, "Kyon blindly fires and misses every shot."

"Damn it, Kyon!" Haruhi scolded, huffing and crossing her arms over her chest.

I slapped my forehead with the palm of my hand and groaned. It's not even my fault...

Koizumi rolled next. Mikuru rolled afterwards, tossing the die like it had been lit ablaze. Yuki gently dropped the pair of dice last.

_Itsuki somersaulted to the ground, planting his knee firmly into the dirt and unleashing a salvo of well-placed shots into the heads of several undead. _

_Asahina screamed and struggled to fire her pistol, but failed as a zombie ambushed her from behind. The creature roared and tore at her throat with ravenous hunger. _

Mikuru herself nearly fainted at the thought of it.

_Nagato stood solemnly behind the chaos, her golden eyes glaring through the glass lens of the scope on her rifle. Her pallor finger squeezed the trigger thrice. Click. Bang. Click. Bang. Click. Bang._

"Yuki," Haruhi growled, "quit hogging all the kills!"

_By some cruel twist of fate, Nagato missed every shot and no zombies died. _

Jesus. She played god even in the board game.

_"Fear not!" Suzumiya, the group's brave leader proclaimed. With startling quickness, she dashed to the left and right, zig-zagging unpredictably and blasting away walking corpses with the business-end of her shotgun. _

_One headshot sent several chunks of skull and flesh sprawling across the earth. The second destroyed another hellspawn by obliterating its chest and causing its body to collapse. Unfortunately, the third blast, aimed at the zombie that held Mikuru, succeeded in disintegrating both the monster's face as well as the helpless girl's.__  
_

"Wait, what?" Suzumiya blurted, shocked and confused. "What happened?"

Nagato stared expressionlessly at the board, unfazed by the redhead's death. "The spray effect of your weapon combined with the recoil drawback disrupted your accuracy skill and you fired incorrectly."

"That's not a thing!" Haruhi exclaimed, flustered.

Koizumi read the instruction manual sadly, shaking his head. "I believe Miss Nagato is correct."

Miss Asahina had long-since fallen from her seat, and she laid sprawled across the floor, pale and unconscious. Her eyelids fluttered and she moaned sickly, "I can't do it anymore..."

"Oh, don't be such a baby," the brunette scolded before turning back to Yuki. "Well, it didn't kill her, right?"

"The caliber of the weapon was high enough to prove lethal," she explained emotionlessly. "And headshots are ordinarily fatal, in-game or otherwise."

I stifled a laugh.

Haruhi cast a fiery glare in my direction before standing from her seat and huffing uselessly. "Fine. We'll just have to play again tomorrow. You're all dismissed."

Though neither I or Mikuru were looking forward to playing more of the game the next day, I'm sure we were both happy to be done with it for the time being. But, as I should have known by now, a meeting of the SOS Brigade can never end so simply.

* * *

"Kyon," Koizumi said as soon as Haruhi left, stopping me from leaving with one hand on my shoulder. "Stay for a minute, would you?"

Jeez. Don't say stuff in that soft tone of voice with your hand on my shoulder. "Yeah, whatever."

"We have something to discuss with you."

I almost jumped out of my skin when Nagato spoke from behind me. "Don't sneak up on me like that," I gasped.

"I did not," she countered sternly.

"That's not important now," Itsuki told us, policing us like we were children and he was a fed-up adult. The burning orange sunset silhouetted his permanently smiling face as he spoke. "What is important, however, is the current phase that Miss Suzumiya has been going through recently."

"You mean the zombie stuff?" I asked bluntly.

He seemed to cringe at my lack of eloquence. "Yes. The zombie stuff."

"Due to her involvement and resulting fascination with the idea and presence of reanimated cadavers, the amount of anomalies stemming from Miss Suzumiya's powers has decreased exponentially." Nagato's caramel eyes glinted in the amber glow of the approaching evening, staring at me like I was supposed to understand exactly what the hell she had just said.

But I didn't, so I replied with an intelligent-sounding, "Um..."

"Miss Nagato means that because of Suzumiya's fascination with the undead, she has become less likely to create closed spaces and other such disturbances," Koizumi barely translated.

"Ah," I responded, slightly more knowledgeable now than I had been five seconds ago. "I see. And what does this have to do with me?"

"We believe that it is best that she be kept interested in this genre for as long as possible," Yuki said, staring at me intently. "And we believe that it is up to you to do so."

"Why me?" I questioned, annoyed that the fate of the world always came back to rest on my shoulders. My back was still sore from the last time.

Koizumi's plastic grin somehow widened. "It's no secret that Miss Suzumiya has taken a considerable liking to you, Kyon. If she's going to listen to whatever any of us have to say, it's going to be you. After all, you are her knight in shining armor."

My face flushed. What a creepy bastard. Before I could protest, though, Nagato suddenly stepped to my side.

"Miss Suzumiya's liking of Kyon does not factor into this equation," she corrected in a very matter-of-fact manner. "And even if it did, there is still not enough evidence to suggest that she wishes for a romantic relationship with him." Then she turned to me. "In any case, we recommend your keeping Suzumiya involved with the horror genre for as long as possible. It seems to calm her; a very useful trait to behold when tasked with observation."

And with that, Nagato marched out of the room.

Koizumi snickered at me as I watched. "My, my. Did you detect a hint of jealousy in Miss Nagato's voice?"

"I'm not..." I stuttered, stunned and confused. "... not sure."

"But she's right," he said, serious once more. "Keeping Suzumiya interested in this walking-dead fiasco might be our best plan of action right now. If she gets too excited, who knows what she could do?"

"Start a zombie-apocalypse," I suggested in all-seriousness.

He winced. "Don't jinx it."


	2. Chapter 2

_"Kyon..."_

The voice dug deeply into my ears with the grinding, intense sharpness of a knife running down my throat. Noise reverberated through my chest and skull, and my heart began to pound.

_"Kyoooon..."_

There was a singing tone in the sound. A hellish, godforsaken singsong quality in it that terrified me to the core. Blood rushed to my head as I unwilling rose from my bed.

The ice-cold surface of the hallway's hardwood floor stung my toes as I walked towards the stairs. Down the stairs. Into the kitchen. Where the noise was.

My creaking footsteps muted her voice for a time, but it wasn't long before I saw her standing alone beneath the flickering light. There was red on the white tile below her small feet, and her ponytail was rumpled and deflated on the side of her head. The rest of her hair laid flat against her head, slick with grease and something else.

"Sis?" a sick, dry imitation of my normal monotone croaked from the back of my throat. "Sis, is that you?"

Her head bobbed to the side gently, like a tree that had encountered a sudden gust of wind. She didn't reply. Something sticky and black dripped from her chin, but I couldn't tell what by looking at the back of her head.

I moved towards her.

_"Kyyyyooooonnnn...!"_

She whirled around and screamed an earsplitting howl that spawned hot, thick blood in my ears. Her face was pale and decaying, half of it shriveled and half of it gone. There were fangs where her baby teeth used to be. Yellow and rotten and bloodsoaked. Bits of skull shined where flesh had vanished. Her clothes were tattered, stained with sickening substances. Only her bright, neon-pink backpack remained untouched, stuck to her bony figure somehow, infused with her spine.

I fell down at the sight of her. Tears ran like lava down my face, searing and slow. "S-...S-Sis?"

She lunged at me with another loud shriek and raised her sinewy claws towards my face.

I awoke just as her nails broke through my skin.

* * *

"Are you alright, Kyon?"

I blinked lazily through crusty eyelids and glanced over at Koizumi. "What?"

"I asked if you were alright," he said again, crossing his arms and leaning over the othello board. "You look like a zombie."

I shot a glare at him. Wasn't he the one that said 'don't jinx it'?

"Well," he quickly retracted, "I suppose I wouldn't go that far. But you look extremely tired. Did you sleep last night?"

With a yawning sigh, I wiped my eyes with both hands and rested my chin atop my palms. "I had some trouble was all," I explained, not telling him about the nightmare about my sister turning into an undead creature from hell. You want to talk about jinxing things, that would've been the epitome of-...

"Movie day!"

The clubroom door crashed open and snapped me to attention as Haruhi marched inside, lugging about ten DVDs under each arm and somehow managing the world's scariest grin on her face as she did so. And sure enough, she was barking orders before any of us knew what was going on.

"Koizumi! Down the stairs there's a TV I need you to grab, pronto!"

Koizumi stood quickly and without hesitation. Ass-kissing drone. "On my way," he declared, running out the door. The echoes of his wooden footsteps rang through the halls and worsened my already painful headache.

"What the hell do we need a TV for?" I asked, nursing my pounding skull with two fingers pressed against my temples.

Haruhi looked at me like she thought I was dumb. Hell, that's probably exactly what she thought. She arched her back and leaned towards me with her lips puckered in disappointment. "Mooovie daaay," she stretched out the words so my tiny brain could comprehend her godly plan.

"Where did you get a TV?" I pried, looking for some sort of hole in her plot.

"Not important!" she sang, brushing away my doubts like a bad stench. Her head whipped around like an owl to face Nagato. "Yuki!"

The quiet girl looked up from her book and stared.

"Drop whatever you're doing!"

Nagato's book fell to the ground with a thud.

"Now get over here and pick out a movie! You too, Kyon."

I stood just as Yuki arrived at my side. We both watched as Haruhi unloaded approximately a metric ton of horror films onto the table, swallowing up the othello board and nearly hiding the entire tabletop from view. They were all zombie movies.

"Where the heck did you get all of these?" I questioned in minor astonishment.

"I found a lot of them in discount bins at stores," she proclaimed proudly, picking one of the DVDs from the pile of boxes and peeling an orange price tag off. "Amazing that these were all so cheap!"

I felt my shoulders droop even lower than normal. And that's saying a lot. "Amazing isn't exactly the word I would use..."

But, as per usual, Suzumiya was ignoring me. "So, which one do you guys want to watch?"

Nagato's honey-colored eyes were fixed firmly on the jumble of discs, and one of her hands was already hovering towards the pile. She removed a surprisingly new-looking copy of 'Zombies VS Strippers' from the depths of R-rated material and held it up for me to see. "I like this one," she murmured mechanically.

Jeez, Nagato! I pushed her hand down and gently forced her to drop the trashy-looking film. "Ah, that one's nice," I said, feeling my face turn color, "but... um, how about this one?"

I grabbed randomly and snatched up another DVD. "Um," I read the title hurriedly and stopped. 'Zombie Strippers'? What the hell? How many zombie movies could someone make including strippers?

Nagato leaned in my way in order to see what I was holding. She daintily placed a finger on the box and nodded slowly. "I like this one, too."

Of course you would, Nagato...

"Both of those are lame," Haruhi remarked, her nose wrinkled in disgust. Which was odd, considering that she was the one who bought the DVDs in the first place. "But this one looks awesome!"

I was presented with a gore-covered piece of plastic scarred with garish red letters. 'Maggot Food: Skin of the Lost,' it read, proudly displayed with a background of decaying corpses and maggot-filled eyeballs.

"We're _so _watching this one," she said excitedly. "Now, where's Koizumi with that TV?"

I held back a groan and slapped my forehead with the palm of my hand. Koizumi's grunts and groans echoed from down the hall. Did he seriously think he could lift that thing all by himself?

"I'll go help him," I excused myself.

"Hurry back!" Suzumiya grinned evilly at the disc in her hands. "I can't wait!"


	3. Chapter 3

The rolling clouds painted the world outside gray, and silver streams of rain spat down from the heavens and collided with the window with sharp, hollow noises. Under Haruhi's orders, I drew the blinds over the glass, locking the room in darkness. A low, rumbling sound shook somewhere in the distance, and moments later, the sky flickered neon blue. Flashes of white-azure light flooded the clubroom through the curtains, and Suzumiya's grinning face glowed ominously in the dark.

Slowly, as though she were handling a precious jewel, she popped open the box and pried out the disc. Her fingers gently pressed the DVD into the mouth of the player, and the machine swallowed with a mechanical gulp.

With a final sigh, I wandered to my seat. The chairs had been realigned to accommodate our movie-viewing experience, and I now sat near the door, on the end of the row. Suzumiya sat opposite, Koizumi was on her right, and Nagato was beside me.

_Bzzzzzmm_

The sudden vibration of my cellphone scared the hell out of me, and I jolted upright in my chair. Just as my hands touched the device, Haruhi was there to stop me.

"Kyon!" she hissed like a snake, eyes full of venom. "No phones in the theater."

Theater? We drew the blinds and turned off the lights. That's like making a pillow-castle and calling it Fort Knox.

I nodded and pulled out my phone in order to turn it off. "Yeah, yeah," I told her, my finger finding the power button automatically. The small screen of my phone flickered and died, and my eyes barely caught the ink-black message that flashed before me.

**Incoming Call From: **

_**Mikuru Asahina**_

Miss Asahina? Why was she calling me? Come to think of it... where _was_ Mikuru?

My eyes darted around the room, searching for a head of red hair in the gray-black light. Nothing. She was nowhere to be seen. Even her maid's outfit hung untouched and forgotten upon the rack of clothes behind us.

I thought about asking Koizumi, but Haruhi would've probably given me a penalty for talking in the 'theater.' And because I valued my life, I decided against that. Mikuru was probably just sick, anyway. Maybe she just wanted someone to pick up her schoolwork or something. Of course, there was also the possibility that she might've been warning us about a disastrous time anomaly or another, but that thought didn't cross my mind as the opening credits of 'Maggot Food' began to roll in blood-red text.

* * *

_"My name is Xavier Bloodshadow. This world... my world... is infested by ravenous creatures..."_

'Xavier Bloodshadow'? I groaned aloud. "You've got to be kidding me..."

Haruhi shushed me harshly without tearing her eyes from the screen.

_"... creatures we used to call maggot food; corpses. But it's much easier to call them..._zombies._"_

I sighed to myself uselessly and rubbed my temples between my forefingers. This was going to be one hell of a movie...

* * *

_"Xavier! Your arm! It's been..."_

_"Bitten. I know."_

_"W-what're we going to do?"_

_"There's only one thing we can do... I'm going to have to amputate it."_

Koizumi and Suzumiya both gasped. Nagato blinked. I held back a moan.

_"Whatever happens, don't let me stop cutting."_

There was a horrid scream and a spurt of blood as our badass protagonist dug the saw into his arm. You could totally see the rubber skin and fake blood. All the same, Haruhi jumped in her seat and Koizumi visibly flinched. I suddenly felt something tighten around my hand, and I jumped a little as well when I saw Yuki holding my palm in her fingers.

"Nagato?" I asked, making sure to whisper, even though there was no way Haruhi could hear me over the screaming television. "Are you... scared?"

She looked at me emotionlessly, and I could feel her cold fingers loosen their grip on me. "No," she denied firmly, turning back to the TV.

_"Look out!"_

_"Brains!"  
_

A wretched, puke-green and piss-gold zombie leapt onscreen, howling horribly. Everyone, including me, jolted at the sight and suddenness of the noise. And Nagato's hand wrapped tighter around mine.

I watched her expressionless gaze meet mine. "You sure you're not scared?" I chuckled.

"Yes," she answered, voice never changing.

I smiled softly and pulled my arm from her grasp, moving it behind her head and around her shoulders. She seemed unfazed by the contact, but I swore I felt her tense muscles loosen ever so slightly.

* * *

_"I've come a long way..."_

I yawned a little as the movie finally wound down, and after an hour and a half of non-stop zombie-killing action, I was ready to call it quits. Koizumi struggled to keep his head up, Nagato had taken to leaning on my shoulder, and I was trying my best to think of anything besides counting sheep. Suzumiya, however, had no trouble staying awake for the final line of monologue that the film had to offer.

_"... after all I've killed, you'd think that I'd have at least made a _dent _in the zombie populous..."_

According to the back of the box, there had been only twenty extras. That makes twenty zombies. That means twenty less undead in the entire world population of infected people. You have a long way yet to go, my friend.

_"... but no. My quest will go on. I am Xavier Bloodshadow."_

A drooling, rotting husk of a man stood silently behind the hero on the TV, and the zombie roared as it rushed at him, horrendous claws raised high. Then the screen cut to black.

_"And it's me versus the maggot food."_

The credits rolled even though we'd seen it all before at the start of the movie. I let out a loud and well-deserved yawn that sounded more like a howl than anything else. Koizumi lolled his head back and blinked awake. Nagato's eyes flickered open as though she'd been sleeping, but I highly doubted she ever seriously slept. And Haruhi... well...

"That was _awesome_!"

Our brigade leader nearly kicked over her chair as she exploded from her seat, spewing enthusiasm as she went. Her brown eyes were electric in the dim light, and I could see the reflection of the gray rain in her fiery gaze.

"I mean did you see how he killed that one? And that other one with the-... with the-... _BLAM! _The shotgun! There were guts everywhere!"

She randomly picked the sleepy-looking Nagato out of the three of us, shaking her small shoulders as she squealed, "Do you remember that part, Yuki?"

Nagato nodded solemnly. "I remember every part."

"Because it was so freaking cool!" Haruhi declared. "And the part where he had to cut off his own arm? That was _so _gross. Wasn't it, Kyon?"

I nodded as well. It was pretty gross indeed.

"Oh, man, and that cliffhanger!" she went on. "The zombie just jumping out at us, and the bit about 'maggot food,' I mean jeez. That was a rip-off." Suzumiya sighed in extreme disappointment. "I guess we'll just have to watch the second movie some other time, huh, Koizumi?"

There was no reply.

"Koizumi?"

Itsuki let out a guttural snore.

"Koizumi!"

"Huh... what?" he mumbled, unwittingly incurring the wrath of God and all her fury. "Oh. Yeah, I guess we will..."

He rubbed the back of his head nervously when he realized what he'd just done. Haruhi was seething, growling with the intensity of a nerd who just heard somebody confuse _Star Wars _and _Star Trek_. "Did you fall asleep?"

"N-no," he argued pointlessly. "I was just... resting my eyes, was all."

"Damn it, Koizumi!"

I stood and stretched my tired body as Haruhi began to chew off Itsuki's ears about theater etiquette. My hands drifted wearily to my phone, and I flipped open the screen as I picked up my backpack. "Goodnight," I said mindlessly, dismissing myself and wandering out the door. For a split-second, I thought I heard Nagato say my name behind me, like she wanted to tell me something, but I shrugged the idea off because I was tired and late as hell.

As I descended the stairs and finally walked out into the school courtyard, I glanced down at my open phone. The light rain pattered against my jacket as I looked in astonishment at the white screen. Two solitary drops of water fell from the sky and splashed into the glass, bleeding murky, silver water across the words displayed on my phone.

**17 Missed Calls ****From: **

**_Mikuru Asahina_**

**17 New Messages ****From: **

**_Mikuru Asahina_**


	4. Chapter 4

That was about the time I heard the moan.

It was quiet, distant. Almost dreamlike. I barely caught it above the sound of the rolling thunder. My muscles tensed and I immediately froze with fear; an hour and a half of half-assed zombie groans and monologue really put me on edge.

There was a thick pause as the rain fell softly like snow around me, and I let out a shaky breath that painted the dank air gray. The walls of the courtyard suffocated me, their chalky bricks glowing ominously pale in the dim light.

Then I sighed again, this time in relief. God, that was stupid. Zombies, Kyon? What bullshit.

I forced a nervous chuckle before returning my attention to my phone. The seventeen missed messages blinked with inky-black urgency, but I was hesitant to listen to them then... call me paranoid.

There it was again. Low, growling.

_**"Ugghh..."**_

Imagining things, I told myself. Chill the hell out. You watched a bad zombie movie and now you're hearing things. It's all in your head.

My eyes darted around cautiously as I dialed Miss Asahina. The ringing monotone drawled in my eardrums and drowned out the noises I was pretending were real. Then there was the hollow click and rustle of an answering caller.

_"H-hello?"_

I grinned at the familiar sound of Mikuru's voice. "Hello, Miss Asahina? It's Kyon."

_"O-oh! Oh, thank God! Kyon, did you get my messages?"_

I frowned with concern at the fear that lined her words, dripping like acidic rainwater down each syllable. "Um, no. I mean, I got them, but I didn't listen to them yet. I thought I'd call you. Is something wrong?"

_"Hm... I-I... um, that's classified."_

I felt my shoulders tense. Something was definitely wrong. And that damned groaning was happening again. "Miss Asahina, what's the matter?"

No reply.

"Mikuru, what's going on?" I demanded. The goddamned moaning was getting louder by the second. My heart began to pound.

_"That's classified."_

**_"Uggrrhh..."_**

Dumbass movie. I shook my head clear of the fake sounds and asked again, "Miss Asahina. What do you need to tell me?"

_"Kyon. I can't tell you everything... but... b-but something really, really bad is about to happen."_

"What?" I wiped the rainwater from my brow. "What's about to happen? Mikuru?"

The cell's screen began to fade when I brought it before me. Bad signal? I shook the stupid device and rattled the insides. Damn. Dead batteries.

_**"Brugh... braiggghh..."**_

Where the hell was that noise coming from? It wasn't imaginary, that much was clear now. I whirled around, executing a swift three-sixty on my heel and scanning the yard for movement. My eyes met with a dark blue, hunched back. It was an indigo jacket; one of our school uniforms. Underneath it was obviously a student, but from the back, it was hard to tell who.

I took a step towards them. Greasy, slicked-back locks of hair. "Taniguchi?"

My old friend's ears perked up a bit at the sound of his name. But he didn't turn.

I sighed a breath of cold, wet air and wandered over to him. My paranoia faded and dimmed into mild surprise. Taniguchi was the one making the noise. Thank God. But what was he doing here? He wasn't exactly the stay-after-hours-and-study-because-I-care kind of guy.

"Hey, man, what're you doing?" I glanced over his shoulder and saw him pawing at the blackness of an unlit window. The darkness of the classroom beyond offered little reflection of his face. "Jeez. It's nothing perverted, is it?"

He lolled his head lazily to the left, as though to get a better view of something I couldn't see. I struggled to follow his gaze. Was there a cute girl in there? I couldn't tell. I didn't want to be caught looking, though, so I nonchalantly clamped a friendly hand around my pal's shoulder and went to pull him away. "C'mon, you animal. There's always tomorrow-?"

I froze. My fingers squeezed gently into his dark jacket and dug into what I assume was skin with a sickening _squish_. I felt my nails sink into the flesh like it was moldy cheese before I quickly yanked away and gazed at my fingers in horror. They were stained red, almost black, with blood. Thick, lukewarm, disgusting... _blood_.

I stumbled backwards. Lightning lanced the sky and illuminated his reflection in the window for a split-second of absolute terror. The clouds bled gouts of rain as Taniguchi's lifeless eyes, glazed-over and sticky with gross fluid, stared into mine. His skin was pale and white, almost green, and his hand clawed at the glass once more, squashing blood and dirt and grime across the glass. A thin, slimy trail of decay stained the black as he turned to look at me.

And I heard what he'd been trying to groan all along as his torn lips parted, and his disintegrating nostrils quivered as he roared.

_**"Brrrainssss!"**_

"No way," I heard myself panting, gasping desperately for much-needed oxygen. "No freaking way."

He took a wobbly step towards me, his arms outstretched and his hands shaped like talons. I staggered away in shock, tripping backwards and onto the concrete below. My palms scraped the icy ground, and searing pain shot through my knuckles like fire. Taniguchi's dead-eyed stare was far more agonizing. Tears singed my eyes as he approached me with ravenous, bloodthirsty intent.

My best friend was dead.

"T-Taniguchi?"

And now he wanted to eat me.

"Taniguchi, please..."

The sobs came without my knowledge. I was choking on the tears, weeping uncontrollably. He never faltered as he limped ever closer.

"Snap the hell out of it, you bastard!" I roared uselessly, my throat raw with panic. "It's me! Kyon! Your best friend, goddamn it!"

It all happened in a three measly seconds, but it felt like hours when he finally reached me. His jaw unhinged as he screamed a horrible sound and charged me.

One second. A glimmer of quicksilver and pale skin flashed before my eyes like lightning as Yuki Nagato suddenly appeared, her leg uncurled and the foot extended as she kicked high into the air. The heel of her shoe smashed into his maw and sent rotten teeth and sickening juices spewing into the wind. Nagato's golden eyes pierced the gray and locked with the zombie's, never blinking as she twirled with the momentum and hurled her other foot into Taniguchi's decomposing skull.

Two seconds. The walking corpse fell backwards, his spine connecting with the window behind him and leaving a white scar of a crack in the black glass. The snapping noise of breaking bones rang out as the thing howled in pain or rage. Yuki landed gracefully before him, her back to me and her face to him. She swept her foot beneath him, knocking him to the ground and flat on his back. Another _snap _shook the air as something else inside his undead body broke, and Taniguchi writhed about helplessly, his oily claws gnashing at the heavens.

Three seconds. Nagato didn't hesitate as she raised her heel into the sky, her arms cemented firmly to her sides, and then threw her foot to the floor with such a force that the earth beneath me literally vibrated. With a gross splat, the point of her heel exploded into the zombie's forehead, and bits of skull and greymatter splashed across the asphalt. Black strands of blood and mucus stained her knees and feet as she watched Taniguchi twitch and spasm until death after death.

Then she turned to me. Flecks of bone and crimson fluid marred her ghostly white face as she stared at me without feeling. A streak of vibrant scarlet blood was spattered across her nose and under her left eye as she spoke. "Get up."


	5. Chapter 5

Several thoughts ran through my mind as Yuki Nagato stared down at me with blood all over her cute, stoic face. But unfortunately, the only one that came out at the time was, "What the _hell _just happened?"

"There is no time for questions," she replied coldly. "We must find Itsuki Koizumi."

Koizumi? What the hell was going on?

Nagato outstretched her hand to me. "We must go. Now."

I flinched away instinctively, suddenly paranoid as hell. I swallowed hard and reluctantly accepted her grasp, and she yanked me to my feet with shocking strength. Her gold-black irises flickered and whorled with energies beyond my comprehension as she analyzed something I couldn't see.

"Behind me."

"What?"

"You. Behind me."

"Nagato-?"

"_Now._"

Yuki suddenly shoved me aside, tossing my already-sore body back into the cold cement.

_**"Brainssss!"**_

She twirled on her heel twice and sliced her foot through the charging corpse's forehead, effectively slashing open his putrid skull and spilling his rotted greymatter across the ground. The zombie choked on its own blood and mucus as it snarled and fell to its knees, allowing Nagato the chance to deliver the final neck-snapping kick to its face. The male monster didn't make a sound as the fleshy, disgusting noise of broken bone and ripping skin filled the air, and the cadaver's head tumbled through the rainy wind and rolled across the pavement.

"Jesus," I muttered, holding down my lunch with all my strength.

The alien-android turned to me when it was over, her expression dire. Well, you know, as dire as an emotionless face like her's could get. Before she said anything, her head suddenly twitched in the direction of a low booming noise in the distance. She blinked and wandered towards it.

I quickly regained my footing and followed; I didn't want to get left behind. Especially not now. "Where are we going?" I asked, my voice still trembling.

"To the current location of Itsuki Koizumi."

* * *

Another crashing explosion echoed through the dank air as we approached the clubroom. Our footsteps quickly became muffled as we came within sight of the horde of undead that stood outside. The doorway itself was smothered with shambling carcasses, each of them bleeding and drooling across the hardwood flooring beneath them. They all aimed their dead-eyed stares forward, locked upon one Itsuki Koizumi.

Koizumi and... and his Beretta?

He glanced up from the crowd of zombies and flashed his trademark, shit-eating grin at us. "Ah, Kyon. Miss Nagato."

He nonchalantly pressed the barrel of his pistol into the open maw of an oncoming hellspawn. His finger squeezed the trigger and effectively splattered gore and bloodstuff across his face, but his unwavering smile told me he didn't give a damn. "Fancy seeing you two here."

I was already fed-up with his attitude. "Koizumi, what the hell is going on?"

"I would have thought it was obvious," he replied with a smartass shrug as he took aim once more. _Bang. Splat._

I went to turn to Nagato for help, but she was already moving. Walking briskly towards whatever the hell her objective was. She pried open the clubroom door, ignoring the nearby swarm of zombies. Her caramel eyes locked with mine briefly before she closed herself within.

"Twenty-six seconds."

Then she slapped the door closed.

"Could somebody tell me," I yelled over at Koizumi, "what the heck is going on!?"

He cocked his head at me and cupped a hand around his ear. _Bang. Splat. _"What did she say?"

"Who?"

"What?" _Bang. Splat._

"Who said what?"

_Bang. Splat. _"Miss Nagato."

"What?"

"Missss Naaagato!" _Bang. Splat._

"Twenty-six seconds, I don't freaking know!"

"Twenty-six sextants?"_ Bang. Splat._

"Twenty-? Why in the hell would she say twenty-six sextants, Koizumi?"

_Bang. Splat. _"How should I know? You're the one who said she said it."

Thank God the door suddenly slammed open before I could retort. And there Nagato stood. With a shitload of guns.

She acted without skipping a beat, stepping into the hall and distributing firearms like candy to children. An assault rifle of some kind landed against my chest as she tossed it into my arms, sending me staggering backwards and into the wall behind me.

Koizumi's face lit up when he saw the quiet girl throwing guns. "Ah, perfect timing!" he said, discarding his pistol. "My ammunition's just run dry, actually."

Yuki flung the second rifle, identical to mine, into the sky, and I watched it whirl and spin until it collided with Itskui's hands with a metallic clap. But before he could react, Nagato equipped a pair of Glocks into her small, pale hands. Her fingers were already fusing with the triggers as she spoke softly above the moaning army.

"Get down."

The esper immediately leapt to the ground, sliding on his back and lining up his sights in case things went to hell. But it was obvious that the purple-haired bookworm knew exactly what she was doing as she fired both weapons several times. Orange-red lights like neon flashed in the cold, gray air, and noise like hellfire exploded in our ears. As though in unison, each of the lumbering corpses turned towards the gunfire only to have their heads quite literally implode.

Blood and bits of bone spattered the walls as bullet after bullet dug into the skulls of the damned, each one making a horrific popping sound as the sudden heat and pressure of the flaming lead smashed through the rotting skin. What had once been about eight or ten enemies had been reduced to smoldering, boiling, bleeding stains on the floor.

Nagato stared at the fallen bodies with graceful calculation, the silver-black color of gunsmoke roiling from the barrels of her twin-pistols. With two quiet clicks that sounded like one, the empty, still-steaming magazines fell from her guns, and her hands flickered like lightning as she reloaded.

Koizumi was the first to speak. "Well, might I say, Miss Nagato," he chuckled as he stood, brushing his jacket off as he did so. "That was one hell of a show."

It took me a second to catch up with reality, and I noticed as I stumbled to my feet that my heart was pounding like crazy. With a dry, breathless voice, I demanded, "So, _now _will you tell me?"

He stopped and stared at me, seeming to forget what I meant. Then his eyes glowed with understanding. "Ah, yes, the... ah, matter of the undead."

"Yeah, the undead," I echoed mockingly.

"As you can see, Miss Suzumiya's influential powers have in some way reanimated these dead," he explained.

"That is incorrect," Nagato interjected, holding her guns daintily at her sides. "These cadavers are in no way connected to the original timeline. Any coincidences are simply Suzumiya's memories mingling with the alternate reality."

Koizumi looked surprised, which was saying a lot, because nothing up until this point seemed to have fazed him. "Timeline? You don't mean that this is a completely separate world, do you?"

"Wait, what?" I struggled to understand, glancing at both of them in confusion.

"Not at all. In fact, this is simply an alternate version of Japan, wherein the country has become infected with a terrible disease. Hence the so-called zombie infestation."

"So what about the rest of the world?"

"Could you both slow down, for God's sake?"

"Miss Suzumiya has only given thought to the infection of Japan, and the rest of the planet is isolated from the disease."

"I see. So contact with the outside world is out of the question."

"Hold on, why?"

"Precisely. If Suzumiya was to attempt to contact anyone outside of Japan, the infection would therefore spread to fulfill her mental image of the earth."

"Of course. That's only logical. But what about this business with the other timeline?"

I felt my knees grow weak beneath me as the world around me began to turn white and mostly colorless. My hands were slick with coldsweat as I dropped my rifle to the floor with a clatter that made both of my companions turn towards me curiously. As I passed-out from the combination of my mind being totally screwed-over coupled with the utter exhaustion of finding out that all of Japan was dead and out to eat our brains, I heard my two friends looming over me.

"Oh, dear. Was he bitten?"

"No. I would have shot him if I detected any signs of infection."

I'm glad to call you my friend, Nagato...


	6. Chapter 6

I blurred awake groggy and dry-mouthed, the taste of sleep plaguing my tongue. Nagato's intense eyes were locked with mine even as I yawned unwillingly in her face.

"Nagato?" I groaned, sitting up. "What's going on-?"

Then I remembered that there was an apocalypse going on and jolted to attention. The icy steel of my rifle stung my fingers as I accidentally touched it, but I forced myself to take it up by the handle anyway. I swallowed hard and stood, stumbling wearily to my feet.

"You are awake," Yuki stated, nodding in approval.

"God, I hope not," I protested uselessly, slapping myself in an attempt to regain my senses.

"I can tell you're a little... overwhelmed," Koizumi spoke from behind her, materializing from nowhere. As per usual.

"Just," I sighed heavily, the weight of my gun tugging down my right side like it was an anchor. "Let me straighten this out for myself, okay? Stop me if I'm wrong."

The pair was quiet as I took a breath through my nostrils and began to explain the situation for my own understanding.

"So, God saw a zombie movie, and now Japan is royally screwed. But only the Japan in this timeline, because Suzumiya somehow created another version of the country for her zombie-fantasy. So none of the zombies are actually people we know, because they're from an alternate universe that doesn't technically exist...?"

I waited and watched Nagato, who said nothing. Her electric-gold eyes stared back at me intently, just waiting for me to screw up this timeline-dimensional malarkey.

"And we can't call for help here, because everyone here is a zombie, and we can't call for help in another country, because then the virus would spread so that Suzumiya's imaginary zombie-world would make sense. So, basically, we're stuck in Japan as the only people alive..."

Koizumi nodded. "That is correct."

"But, how do we stop it?" I blurted.

"That is entirely up to Suzumiya's unconscious willpower," Nagato answered. A moan or a groan echoed somewhere in the distance, and her head snapped towards it instinctively.

"Jesus," I cursed, slumping against the wall behind me. The rifle shifted with me, nearly knocking me to my knees when it bopped into my leg. "And, can I ask just where on earth you two got these guns?"

Koizumi grinned happily at the question. "Oh, well, I always carry a concealed firearm."

"You _what_?" I gasped, looking at him with shock in my gaze.

Nagato seemed to agree, returning her attention to the esper and scolding, "It is against school policy to possess a weapon while on the premises."

But I wasn't so quick to jump to her side, either. "Now, hold on, Nagato! You were the one packing AK's and Glocks in the clubroom!"

Itsuki shook his head with mock disappointment. "For shame, Miss Nagato," he said.

"Oh, you shut up," I commanded.

"The weapons we hold now were not in existence until ten minutes and twenty-nine seconds ago," she explained calmly. "They were crafted through the Data Overmind in accordance with emergency protocol regulations, which override any earthly statutes within reason."

I blinked in confusion, but I think I understood. Then I turned back to Koizumi, whose smile evaporated as soon as my cold stare met his own. "Okay, so what's your excuse?"

He paused. The chilling, gray sunlight was beginning to bleed through the window behind us, and the clouds had long since parted with the departure of the rain.

"The second amendment," he finally replied.

"That's an American thing, Koizumi..."

"Well, there's a first time for everything, Kyon."

I didn't feel like telling him that that was an American thing as well.

* * *

"So just where the hell are we going?" I asked as we walked through the double-doors of the school entrance, exiting quietly with our guns raised and readied.

"We have to find Miss Suzumiya," Koizumi whispered back, wary to speak as his eyes crossed a mass of crawling flesh-monsters.

"Then what?" I hissed.

"Then we find Miss Asahina," he retorted, cocking his rifle and taking precautionary aim at the horde of zombies. "If at all possible."

My heart sank into my stomach. He didn't know. So Mikuru had only called me. "About that, Koizumi..."

"Silence," Nagato suddenly demanded, lowering herself down onto her knees and aiming her twin-pistols at a passing corpse. Her fingers were a literal hair's breadth from the triggers.

The cadaver moaned a sickly cry, hobbling this way and that, uncertain or unaware of its destination.

I gulped quietly and took aim. I'd never fired a gun before.

Thank God it kept going, wobbling away like a wounded animal after food. I sighed a breath of relief as we crept onward and away from the school.

The world that was sunny and partly cloudy earlier this morning now seemed alien and dangerous, with dark, silver sunlight dripping like acid from the sky above. The cries of the damned echoed through the streets of the ghost-city, and the very stone of which the roads and buildings were built from felt devoid of life, emanating an inner, evil darkness. Empty shells that once were cars lied rusted and broken along the sidewalks, some perfectly parked next to the curb, and others toppled on their sides or backs.

Then we heard the laughter.

"Over this way," Koizumi quickly directed, beating Nagato to the punch as another filthy, masculine roar of a laugh rang out in the distance.

"It sounds... alive," I remarked with fright, following my two friends closely.

"Human male," Yuki observed with her ears, listening carefully as we quickened our pace to a casual sprint. "Approximately twenty-three years of age, six-feet and three inches tall."

She dashed in front of us and held out her arm to stop us as she added coldly, "He is not alone."

We screeched to a halt behind a crumbling corner of a large building, where it appeared a car had torn through the siding and left a gaping hole in its wake. Koizumi held a finger to his lips to signal silence, and the three of us knelt to the ground in unison. Okay, well I was a little slow, but come on. It was my first time in an apocalypse.

The three of us peered curiously out from behind the wall. I held back a gasp of surprise when I saw Suzumiya standing alone between about five guys that looked like they could easily beat the shit out of me. And they were all staring at her with disgusting, dirty eyes that no doubt were undressing Haruhi in their minds. The leader, the guy who we'd heard laughing, was a tall son of a bitch with two hulking arms and a baseball-bat. Barbwire and nails protruded from the giant club like thorns on a weed, and he twirled it lazily in his hand, seeming to size her up for the slaughter.

My heart was going about a hundred or so by the time he started talking.

"You're a tough little bitch," he spat, letting out another terrible laugh that sent shivers down my spine. "But damn, does that uniform look good on you..."

He put a grimy hand under her chin, wrapping his fingers firmly around her mouth and fondling her lips. "I'm gonna' love ripping it off you," he sneered.

Our SOS Brigade Leader promptly chomped down on his hand as soon as he tried forcing open her mouth. There was an ugly-sounding snap and quiet _squash _as Haruhi's teeth sank into his knuckles, and the thug shrieked in agony and yanked away, blood oozing from his hand. "You-! You little slut!"

Suzumiya wasn't listening, though. She was too busy spitting to hear anything. "_Blech!_" she exclaimed, sticking her tongue out at him as she complained. "Have you ever washed your hands, like, ever?"

"We have to act fast," Koizumi commented as the man approached her once more.

There were about a million questions I wanted to ask. How were there more people alive? Didn't Suzumiya only want zombies in this world? How were we going to fight five grown men the size of skyscrapers? Did Haruhi have a freaking death-wish?

"Yo, Toothpick!" the gang-leader shouted to one of his buddies, holding his still-bleeding hand against his shirt in order to slow the flow of blood. "Get your ass over here."

A shifty, rat-faced guy emerged from behind him, his bulbous, toxic-green eyes way too big for his freakishly tiny face as he stared intently at his boss. "Y-yeah, boss-man? I-I'm here, boss-man, I gotcha' back boss-man, yeah," he chittered quietly.

"Cut the little whore up a little," the tall bastard ordered with an evil smirk. "Make her bleed some. Leave the good parts alone, though, got it?"

The man apparently named Toothpick grinned with rows full of fangs and animal-like teeth as he glanced mischievously at Haruhi. "Y-yeah," he snickered as he flicked open a large pocketknife, the silver blade glinting in the cold, shadowy light. "Yeah, I got you, boss-man. I read you l-loud and c-clear."

My heart throbbed hard against my chest, my ears were ringing, and my fingers were sore and tense from holding too tightly to my gun. And I was pretty pissed-off and scared on top of all that.

So I was shocked when I was the first one to pull the trigger.

The bullet flew and the explosion of a retort pierced the air as I took aim at the man called Toothpick. The steely shot soared and seared straight through his gnarled fingers, biting off several at the knuckle and splattering blood in his nasty face. Time seemed to stop as he stared dumbly at his severed fingertips, the skin and bone twitching senselessly on the concrete below. His knife clattered to the ground as he let out a girlish scream.

"Jesus Christ! My fingers, boss-man, my freakin' fingers are freakin' gone!"

The 'boss-man' whirled around and saw the three of us hiding. His eyes lit with rage as he raised the baseball-bat full of metal and sharp stuff and stormed towards us with deadly intent.

I was still standing there, numb with horror at what I'd just done. I shot a man. _I _shot a man. I _shot _a man.

But Nagato and Koizumi were already moving.


	7. Chapter 7

It was difficult to hear my own thoughts above the roar of shouting and shock that rang in my ears. The smoke roiling from the barrel of my gun seared my flesh and eyeballs as I watched in terror as Toothpick toppled to the ground and started sniveling and sobbing like a baby. His boss did not slow, his jet-black cowboy boots clinking as the spurs whirled and scraped the concrete. I could only imagine how many skulls he'd crushed with those boots.

Koizumi was taking aim at the guy on the right, and Nagato was sprinting past him and to the left. I stood dumbfounded in the center, staring stupidly at the tall man with a baseball-bat. He looked back at me through his long, grease-slick hair, amber irises of hellfire behind an ink-black curtain.

The man in Koizumi's sights yelled a guttural battlecry and rushed the esper, who calmly squeezed several rounds off and into the idiot's body. Three gaping craters exploded out the guy's chest and back as he stumbled over and into the dust, landing unceremoniously face-first at Itsuki's feet.

The two that stood near Yuki glanced at each other and traded perverted images via eye-contact. One of them sniggered and outstretched an empty, filthy hand to her, blatantly ignoring the two pistols she had aimed at their heads. He flexed his gnarled fingers and grinned evilly at the android.

"Here, here, little girl," he teased. "Com'here and take daddy's hand, sweetheart."

The smarter of the pair drew a large blade, probably a machete, and made a swishing-noise as he sliced the wind and let it rest at his side. Then he too proceeded to taunt the unassuming Nagato. His long, spindly arm reached out for her to take. "Ha, yeah. Lick my lollipop, baby. I'll show you how to do it-..."

In a glimmer of icy, silver light, the two Glocks Nagato had been holding flew high into the air. And before the guy could react or end his sentence, Yuki's hand had taken his forearm with an audible clap as her fingernails sunk into his dirty, tan flesh. Blood trickled from the tiny, crescent-moon cuts even as she twisted it at an impossible angle and snapped the bones inside with a sickening _crack_.

The machete-wielding man squealed in agony and dropped his knife as she performed an astounding corkscrew-esque somersault that made the bones inside his broken arm crackle like popcorn. He tumbled with the nimble girl, smashing dumbly into the cement below and landing oddly on his neck. His eyes were wide and rolling into his head as Nagato finally released him and turned to the remaining assailant.

The last guy was standing absolutely still, petrified with horror at the sight of his dead friend and the girl who killed him so damned easily.

"Catch," she told him quietly as the guns she had thrown toppled back down to earth.

He glanced up just in time to see the falling weapons and catch them as they smacked into his empty palms. His fingers instinctively found the triggers as Nagato suddenly rushed forth and wrenched both of his wrists upward, positioning the twin-barrels squarely under the man's chin. With her thumbs she forced the goon to pull both trigger-mechanisms and blow two holes into his jaw and out the top of his skull. Blood and greymatter squirted from his bandanna-sheathed head like a cherry-red fountain before he fell down next to his comrade.

Toothpick had long since recovered, and was fleeing the scene, clutching his bloody fingers and wiping snot and tears away with his sleeves. Yuki's eyes locked with his form like a cheetah spotting a wounded gazelle, and she immediately followed.

And the whole time, the boss-man watched me like a vulture as he casually lit a cigarette and jammed it into his mouth. His fangs chewed on the paper as he sized me up for the slaughter. He was right at home amdist the chaos, even if all his buddies were dead or running away.

"You think you're pretty friggin' tough, don't you, schoolboy?" he snarled through his cig, puffing gray-black smoke between words. The bat screeched against the ground as the nails and wire drew sparks along the rock. "I'm gonna' shove that gun of yours straight up your ass."

I swallowed a lump in my throat the size of a small meteorite and took a step backwards.

He started to raise his club and stomp towards me just as Haruhi's arms coiled around his throat from behind. He gagged violently and nearly lost his fag as he choked against her clenched fists. Suzumiya shouted something akin to a battlecry and leapt onto his back, wrapping her legs around his waist and mounting him with intent to kill. Hell, her teeth were yanking on the guy's ear, for God's sake!

"I got him, Kyon!" she spat through a mouthful of ear-flesh and bloodstuff.

Can we just pause for a minute and give our SOS Brigade Leader a well-deserved 'hell-yeah'?

The man screamed in pain and cursed loudly as he struggled against Haruhi's iron-will and probably iron-grip. But his tattooed meathook eventually located Suzumiya's long, brown hair as his claws hooked into her scalp and pulled. Hard.

With a terrifying yelp, Haruhi was flipped over his shoulder and onto the ground with a solid crash. She groaned and strained to move, lying nearly unconscious beneath the murderous thug. Her eyelids flickered with fear and white-hot pain as the guy growled and shifted his cig between his lips.

"Screw it!" he snapped, bringing the metal-stuffed bat above his head, ready to deliver a deadly home-run to Suzumiya's skull. "Time to die, bitch!"

My finger throbbed with pounding blood as the recoil of my AK sent shudders down my arms. A good half of my clip was emptied as I held fast to the trigger, sending fiery slugs of swift death towards the former boss-man. Blood exploded from his chest as the stream of bullets traveled up his abdomen and into his throat, a zig-zagging line of gore erupting from his tattered jacket and flesh. The bastard sputtered mucus and crimson as he staggered backwards a good five feet, choking on blood and torn skin as he went. With a final, spitting gasp, he fell back awkwardly onto his spine, eliciting a gross crack as he spattered across the floor.

Ears ringing, heart pounding, and out of breath, I held the half-empty gun tightly in my hands, my knuckles white and tense. Half of me was scared as hell at what I'd just done. The other half was feeling pretty damn proud of itself.

Koizumi was the first to speak. He was at Haruhi's side in a heartbeat, kneeling by her fallen form. "Miss Suzumiya? Are you alright?"

There was a long pause as she opened her eyes and inhaled deeply through her nose. One of her hands swiped blood and dirt and hair out of her face before she finally spoke.

"That was _freaking awesome_!"

Itsuki and I let out a sigh of relief. Thank God that God was okay.

"We were certainly worried about you," the esper said as he helped her to her feet.

"That was amazing!" she continued to gush, ignoring his concern. Her caramel eyes twinkled with excitement as she glanced between us anxiously. "Koizumi, you just, you were like _blablablam_!"

Haruhi made fake gunfire noises and mock-fired at Itsuki's chest, pretending that he was one of the goons he had gunned down not even minutes ago. "You straight-up killed him! Good riddance, too. The jerk!"

As Suzumiya started to nerd-out over how I had blasted away the leader, Nagato's tiny voice spoke from somewhere behind me. "All hostiles have been eliminated."

I jolted with surprise and whirled around to see her. "I thought I told you not to sneak up on me," I said, holding a hand to my hammering heart.

"I did not," she told me.

I ran a hand through my sweat-slicked hair and sighed. "Right," I agreed in exhaustion. "You never do, Nagato. So what happened to Toothpick?"

Nagato's gold-black irises glinted as she blinked at me like I was stupid. Because I probably was. "All hostiles have been eliminated," she repeated firmly.

I was about to ask what that meant exactly, but then I saw the blood on her uniform, and I decided against it.

"Where did you guys get those guns, anyway? They're so cool! When do I get one? Can I have one like that?"

There was a tap on my shoulder as Haruhi's voice buzzed in my ears from behind. "Kyon, hey, Kyon!"

I turned slowly and held back a tired groan. "What?"

She held out one hand and put the other on her hip. "I want your gun."

The groan I'd been withholding came out against my will. Good to see nothing's changed, Suzumiya...


	8. Chapter 8

"Now just a moment, Miss Suzumiya," Koizumi said carefully, talking down the greedy goddess. "I'm sure we have an extra weapon for you."

Nagato wandered forward silently and offered one of her Glocks. Haruhi beamed and snatched it away like a child after candy.

"This is so badass!" she squealed, aiming it here and there. "It's loaded, right? Just aim and shoot?"

Itsuki's face drained of color when the anxious girl pointed the gun in-between his eyes. "Y-yes!" his always-official voice cracked with fear as he brushed the barrel away. He swallowed hard and forced a nervous smile. "T-that's exactly right. So the last thing you want to be doing is aiming it at one of us."

She frowned and looked almost disappointed. "Yeah, I guess you're right," she said, pouting as she let the firearm hang at her side. "Can't have my zombie-apocalypse team die on me so early-on, right?"

I resisted the dying urge to face-palm. "Zombie-apocalypse team?" I asked hesitantly.

Her lips pursed and formed a thin line as she glared at me like I was the biggest idiot in the world. As per usual. "Um, duh!" she scolded, shaking her head at me. "Jeez, Kyon, don't you know _anything _about the apocalypse?"

"I guess not..." I admitted, preparing for another Suzumiya-tirade.

The gun was in my face before anybody knew what was going on, and I promptly leapt backwards and flat on my ass in response. "Jesus!" I cursed loudly.

"We've all got a role, dummy," she explained, using the pistol as an extremely dangerous pointer. She bobbed the barrel at me. "You're the guy who dies first."

Before I could reply, she turned and jabbed the gun at Koizumi, who flinched back instinctively. "You're the brains," she declared.

"W-well, thank you Miss Suzumiya," he stuttered.

But Haruhi had already moved on, pointing her free hand at herself. "I'm obviously the leader."

I wanted to ask why she was pointing the gun at everybody but herself, but again Suzumiya proved too fast for human reaction.

"And you're the weapons-expert!" she told Nagato, jamming the Glock in the quiet girl's face. She didn't blink. Haruhi paused and reconsidered, "Well, maybe you'd just be the badass. You know, the unarmed guy. Or the speed-fighter?"

Finally, Haruhi shrugged and happily proclaimed, "Wow, Yuki. I guess you've got it all."

"I am aware," Nagato answered calmly.

Wiping the dust from my jacket, I staggered to my feet. "Okay, okay," I said, strapping the rifle around my shoulder and showing my palms like I was being held at gunpoint by a maniac. Which I was. "Now that we've established who's who-..."

"Hey, where's Mikuru?" she interrupted. "She's totally our team-mascot."

Koizumi, who was as wary as I was about speaking to a gun-wielding Haruhi, shrugged carefully and slowly backed away and out of range. "We haven't seen her yet; we were looking for you."

"She left," I lied quickly, remembering the messages on my dead cellphone. "She's... out of town."

There was an unusually long pause as this sank into the gray air. The noise of undead echoed in the distance.

"Okay," Suzumiya accepted. "Too bad, though. She would've made a super cute mascot."

I let out a long-awaited sigh of relief before I suddenly jolted back to attention. "Hold on a minute, did you just call me 'the guy who dies first'?"

* * *

The city was deathly quiet as we marched side-by-side through the barren streets, Nagato on one end and Haruhi on the other. Koizumi and I made up the center, looking rather formidable with our rifles in-tow. Yuki's ever-shifting irises flickered to and fro, constantly searching for movement and danger and successfully putting me on edge.

"So, Kyon," Itsuki broke the silence, tucking his rifle under his armpit as we continued walking. "Where exactly is Miss Asahina?"

I cast him a surprised glare. Was he thick in the head? How the hell was I supposed to tell him where, or moreover _when_, Mikuru was right in front of Suzumiya? _"Oh, yeah, Koizumi. She's in the future I think, last I checked with her. How about you ask Nagato? The Data Overmind might give us a better answer..."_

Esper-son-of-a-bitch. "I told you, out of town."

"Right," he said with a nod. "But where?"

My eyes widened at him, and I double-checked to make sure Haruhi wasn't looking as I snarled, "Out of town, Koizumi." I tapped my wrist like I was telling him the time and gave him a look. "_Way _out of town."

He cocked an eyebrow. Then his face lit with sudden understanding. "I- oh! _Oh_... I see! Ah, how long will she be gone?"

"She didn't say," I told him, "it was kind of need-to-know stuff, anyhow. She said it was _classified_."

Koizumi nodded quickly. That was a word we knew all-too well. "I see," he said again. "I see."

Haruhi let out a huff. "Normally I'd be all for this crappy code-speak, but you guys just make it weird."

I sighed wearily and Itsuki let out a nervous, way-fake laugh. "Code-talk?" he asked, feigning innocence. "Whatever do you mean?"

"What is our current destination?" Nagato intervened suddenly, saving the day once again.

Suzumiya tapped her chin thoughtfully. "Well, we should probably stock up on supplies somewhere, then hole-up someplace. Supplies are our top priority!"

Our leader took a big step forward and in front of us, stopping the three of us in our tracks. She grinned at me and cocked her head sweetly. "How often do you stock your fridge, Kyon?"

* * *

"We're here," I announced, unlocking the door to my house and holding it open for the group. "We've got some canned goods downstairs." I instinctively tossed my backpack onto the floor where we kept our shoes, and I almost took mine off before I remembered that zombies were kind of everywhere. "I'll check the fridge for stuff that'll keep..."

"Hold on a minute!"

Suzumiya stomped inside and in front of me, and Nagato and Koizumi followed shortly. The brunette stood defiantly in my way. I blinked and realized that this was the first time that any of them had really been in my house. Like, really. There was that one time, but... it didn't really add up to our post-apocalyptic Brigade meeting, now did it?

Her gold-brown eyes were electric as they contrasted with the bland colors of the foyer. Everything felt... lifeless, I noted quietly. The house was more than likely empty. Unless Haruhi's imagination had allowed zombies or bandits into my home. "We never do anything alone, got it? Rule number one in any horror movie: never be alone. People who are alone end up dead, right?"

"All of those people are dumb blonde stereotypes," I countered, suddenly feeling awkward carrying a machine-gun inside my house. "And more importantly, they're actors. This isn't a movie, Haruhi."

"Even so," Koizumi argued in a levelheaded tone, "it's best to be safe. We don't know an awful lot about what we're up against."

I thought about that and finally gave in with a reluctant nod. Suzumiya's imagination was far too dangerous for me to think that there wouldn't be some sort of threat around every corner. Hell, she was the one that dreamed up the thugs that tried to rape her earlier. There was a moan from somewhere outside the house that made me agree even more so. "Yeah, yeah alright."

"Yuki, you go with Kyon," Haruhi ordered, pointing from Nagato to me. "And Koizumi, you come with me."

"Roger," he confirmed.

The two wandered off into the basement, leaving the badass bookworm and I alone on the main floor.

I chuckled after a while and led Nagato into the kitchen. "'Roger,'" I echoed the esper's word with amusement. "How wannabe-military can you get?"

Yuki did not respond as we crossed the doorway and into the dining-area. I reached for the refrigerator-door and shrugged her silence off.

_**"...bbraa...brrrraiiiisss..."**_

A puny, rasping growl emerged from behind the fridge-door and froze me in my tracks. My heart walloped against my chest, and a lump formed in my throat as I glanced fearfully at Nagato. Her pistol was trained on the door, sights locked on the top shelf where we kept the milk.

I mouthed a frightened, silent question to my partner. _"Where is it?"__  
_

Her eyes met mine, and I saw a shocking amount of uncertainty inside of them as she hesitated to answer. _"Behind the door," _she eventually mimed.

I nodded slowly and listened closely to the noise of undead, pinpointing its location directly behind the handle I had my hand on. I closed my eyes and steeled myself as the thing let out another sputtering snarl. My heartbeat was akin to the pace of fully-automatic gunfire as I counted the seconds off in my brain. Knuckles tensed and turned white as I held my breath.

One.

_**"... grghk, gruuughkk... rrrahhh..."**_

Shut it out of your head. Gibberish. Scary-as-hell nonsense. Two.

_**"...brrr... brrrugggh..."**_

Now. Pull back... Three.

With all of my might, I wrenched back the door of the fridge and threw it as hard as I could in the direction of the shambling corpse. The unseen enemy screeched a bloody, choking noise as the steely surface smashed into what was probably its nose. A crimson flower bloomed from the impact, and a satisfying crack resounded through the house as the zombie toppled to the tiled floor.

I was panting when I finally shut the door and readied my rifle, prepared and willing to end the bastard while he was writhing around on the ground.

Then everything stopped when I saw my little sister bleeding and crawling on all fours, her jagged, tattered maw gaping and frothing pink at the seams as she struggled to gnaw at my ankles. Her lifeless, white eyes were bloodshot and slick with slime as she stared hard into my soul, yearning for my flesh. There was a sickening, fridge-door-handle-shaped dent in her small skull, blood and pus oozing from the wound. Pale, dead skin. Greasy, slicked-back locks of brown hair. Pink backpack wet with blood and mud.

"S..." I choked back terror and tears, "Sis?"

_**"Kyyyyyoooonnnn!"**_


	9. Chapter 9

The monster that was once my baby sister stared up at me with dead, cold eyes glazed-over with slimy decay. She shoved her body up and off of the floor with a disgusting _squelch _as her spindly arms pushed against the tile. Something in her exposed flesh popped before her body toppled back, then forward, back, and forward once more as she regained her balance.

It reminded me of the time that mom was teaching her how to walk.

The tears came without my consent, hot and unbearably slick as it ran twin rivers down my face and chin and neck. Droplets of despair dotted my necktie, and I stumbled backwards and smacked into the kitchen counter. My spine rattled as shivers pulsated through my entire being. Vomit crawled up my throat and coldsweat dripped down my forehead.

"_**Ky-… kyoooonn…"**_

The nausea assaulted my brain in hellish waves that sickened me to my very core. A long, gross string of bile flew up and out of my mouth as I lost my lunch all over the floor. "Oh, God," I was muttering. "Oh my God."

There was a sharp _click _as Nagato's Glock suddenly rose beside me, level with the little girl's head. "Get behind me," she ordered in her usual quiet monotone.

"_No_!" I shouted suddenly, slapping the gun away and instinctively putting myself between danger and my sister. Yuki's golden eyes glared hard at me as I met her gaze, my nostrils flaring with defensive rage. "What the hell do you think you're doing!?"

The girl blinked, unfazed. "Eliminating the hostile. Stand aside."

"Like hell!" I spat furiously, backing away from Nagato and closer to my innocent younger sibling. Sis mumbled something I couldn't understand from behind me. "That's my sister you're talking about."

Nagato looked at me silently, her pale skin glowing ominously in the cold, gray light that filtered through the kitchen window. Her pistol hung loosely in her hand, her arms at her sides. Waiting patiently to kill my sister. "Kyon. The creature you see only resembles the person who was your sister. Your real sister is not present in this timeline."

I glanced back at Sis, faltering for a moment. Then Nagato raised her gun-arm once more and set me right back on the edge.

My hands morphed around the shape of my assault rifle before I knew what I was doing. The trigger was only a hair's breadth away from my index finger when I spoke, "Put the gun down, Nagato."

Yuki seemed to falter as well, but recovered as quickly as I did. She pointed the gun at my abdomen, directly where my sister stood behind me, and I pointed my own rifle at her head.

There was a chilling, hellish pause as we stood there for a thick, disgusting second.

"Stand aside, Kyon."

"I mean it, Nagato."

"Kyon. Listen to me. The entity behind you..."

"I _will _do it, Nagato!"

"... is not your sibling. She is a product of Haruhi Suzumiya's..."

"Goddamn it, Yuki, put down the freaking gun!"

"... alternate timeline. She is not in fact-..."

I jumped as the shot rang out.

My trigger-finger shook erratically and my eyes went wide when I realized my mistake. The solid, cracking sound of the gunshot woke me from the delusion far too late, and I was forced to watch in slow-motion as a bullet soared from the mouth of my rifle and through Yuki's left side. The fabric of her uniform tore in a shadowy whorl of cloth and blood as the lead grazed her skin as it flew. I flinched as I imagined the white-hot agony she must have felt shooting up her stomach and into her chest, if she felt pain, anyway.

The bullet spun and ricocheted off of the floor behind her and tumbled through the air, finally clinking to the ground and spinning several times with tiny, metallic swishing sounds before falling on its side. It rolled an inch as gunsmoke roiled off of the shell and into the air.

"... your sister," she finished nonchalantly, even though her eyes were wide with surprise.

I went to speak, my mind racing at a million miles an hour, but my thoughts were cut-off by the sudden slashing noise and the searing sensation I felt in the backs of my legs. I cried out in pain and toppled to my knees, and I could hear the blood draining out of my legs even before I turned and saw where my sister the zombie had attacked me.

She was screaming deadspeak at me, her claws wet with my blood, outstretched and flailing. Her lifeless eyes burned a hole in my heart as they looked at me and saw nothing more than another meal.

I fell back onto my hands, my gun dragging across the floor beside me as I crawled away in fear. One of my hands collided with a low drawer, and I pulled myself up by the edge of the countertop when I finally regained my bearings. I stumbled to my feet and glanced at Nagato. "N-Nagato..."

"I am fine," she replied coldly, small flecks of pinkish blood decorating her black uniform.

I swallowed hard and looked back at the small zombie that stood before us. The ponytail bobbed as the thing breathed through tattered lungs.

Focus.

She panted heavily and locked gazes with me. Her neon backpack shifted as she took a wobbly step closer.

Focus, Kyon.

My grip tightened around my gun as she let out a ghastly moan.

_**"Kyon..."**_

She is not your sister.

**_"Kyoooonnnn..."_**

No. _It _is not your sister.

**_"Brrraggghh!"_**

It's not saying your name.

_**"Brrraaiiggh!"**_

It was never saying your name.

_**"Brraaaainssss!"**_

_Focus_, goddamn you!

I screamed and fused my finger with the trigger and unleashed a salvo of fiery death upon the monster, squeezing the trigger until five spattered holes exploded open in the hellion's skull. Bloodstuff and greymatter splashed into the air and sprayed the floor, staining the white tile with sickly shades of red. The thing let out a dying cry and choked on its own blood until it could stand no longer, and it fell to the ground in a heap, twitching horridly, its body racked with death-spasms.

I coughed out smoke and traces of vomit as I gagged on the roils of gunsmoke that poured from my rifle. Tears ran down my eyes like rain as a low, rolling peal of thunder rumbled somewhere far away. My vision blurred and faded as I stared dumbly at the corpse before me. I couldn't tear my gaze away from the body that looked exactly like my little sister's.

Silence overtook the room. Unwelcome and deathly.

I was the first to speak. "N-..." I sniffled, wiping my eyes and nose with my sleeve, "Nagato... Nagato, I am so sorry..."

A jolt shot up my spine when her small arms suddenly wrapped around me in a quiet embrace. I lost the will to hold my assault rifle any longer, and I let it fall to my side, dangling by the strap that ran around my shoulder. My eyes leaked liquid emotion that pattered onto her shoulders and made me feel like such a freaking weakling.

Her arms only tightened their hold on me when I started to sob into her body, my own body hunching and shaking with sadness. "Yuki..." I choked, finding the strength to talk but quickly losing it again.

Yuki Nagato backed away for only a moment so that she could stare at me mechanically and explain, "You appeared in need of a hug."


	10. Chapter 10

Nagato had disposed of the zombie's body by the time that Koizumi and Suzumiya got back upstairs. Itsuki, being the loyal pack-mule that he was, had his arms full of canned goods that looked like they would have been a lot to carry for _two _people.

"Check it out," Haruhi beamed, unaware of the events that had just transpired. I envied her ignorance. "We'll be set for the whole apocalypse!"

Yuki reappeared from behind me, her vacant stare analyzing the food as she came to my side and stopped. She nodded quietly in approval, pretending like she hadn't just hidden away some little girl's corpse. "It is sufficient."

"Yeah it is!" our leader agreed, her smile never-fading. She marched over to where I'd dropped my bag and grabbed it up like it was her own. "Kyon, I'm confiscating your book-bag. We need something to carry the food."

I tried to nod but couldn't muster the strength to, so Haruhi took the pack without my permission. She emptied a mess of school supplies out onto the kitchen table, education be damned, and Itsuki unloaded the cluster of cans into the backpack with a loud, tinny clatter. He let out a sigh of relief and stretched his sore arms.

"What's our next course of action?" the esper asked, sporting his own undying smile.

The brunette tapped her chin thoughtfully and made a humming noise. "Well, it's getting dark out. I think maybe we should board this place up and stay the night. What do you guys think?"

Koizumi nodded and smiled mindlessly, and I stood there in silence like an idiot trying to stop my head from spinning. Nagato surprised me by looking up at me and waiting patiently, as though she were awaiting my answer before her own. I glanced down at her curiously and swallowed hard.

"Sure," I eventually said, shaking the shock away. "We can hole up in my room."

Yuki nodded in agreement.

* * *

"You seem a little shaken, Kyon."

I glanced back at the esper as I led us upstairs and towards my room, the bag of canned goods weighing my left side down like an anchor. I shook my head and kept my eyes forward. "It's nothing. My room's the one on the right here."

I opened my bedroom door and let the bag of cans tumble to the floor with a hollow clatter. Cold, bluish light was filtering in through the glossy pane that was my window, casting my room in a lonely, alien glow that sent a chill down my spine as I realized for the second time that day that we were the only people left alive in all of Japan.

"This is great," Suzumiya beamed, entering past me, her eyes alight with a mischievous spark of passion akin to a child finding the perfect tree for their fort. "One of us can keep watch at the window while the rest of us take shifts sleeping!"

Nagato's tactical gaze swept across my room. "It will suffice."

"You two get set up in here," Koizumi's voice came from somewhere behind me, his hand suddenly clamping down on my shoulder. "Kyon and I will make sure the rest of the house is secure."

I glanced back at Itsuki as he led me away from the room and further down the hallway. I followed uncertainly, my mind still hazy as he stopped at the bathroom door and peered inside. He looked back at me inquisitively.

"Does this door lock?"

I felt myself cringe at his tone when he asked me that, and it snapped me back to a normal-esque state of being. "The hell are you planning on doing to me in a locked bathroom?" I retorted.

The remark seemed to slide off of him like water on a rock, and he only laughed in response. "Not much. We just need to talk is all."

"Talk," I echoed wearily, walking past him and into the restroom. He followed and clicked the lock into place as I sat down on the toilet, facing his back. "Sure. Not that I have much of a choice."

"Good to see you're catching on," Koizumi chuckled, his smile like a scar on his face. He turned to me and leaned into the door behind him, crossing his arms across his chest and staring at me with a sudden cold calculation. His expression was suddenly dire in the dimming light that shone from the window behind me. "Now. On to business."

"Business," I echoed again.

"The business of how we're going to survive this epidemic," he clarified, shifting his legs until they were crossed. "We need to communicate, Kyon."

I blinked at him, unsure and a little pissed-off at that statement. Communicate? What the hell did he think I had been doing? Furthermore, did he think what he had been doing was _communicating_? "You mean like how we were communicating when we were at the clubroom, and you were shooting up corpses? Or like when we killed those people to save Haruhi?"

Itsuki looked surprised, which was a new look for him. He didn't wear it well. "There is a difference," he argued calmly, though I sensed something boiling beneath the surface of his words, "between plan and action, Kyon. There are times when actions speaks louder than words, and when the zombie hordes come knocking at your door..." His face turned dark and threatening, his never-fading, ghastly wound of a smile growing somehow as he trailed-off.

I sat up a little straighter on the toilet seat and struggled to meet his gaze.

He replaced his evil grin with a slightly less menacing one. "Well, I try not to think about that too much," he said. "But you understand. They were very in-the-moment situations. From now on, we'll just have to do a better job of communicating, won't we?"

I nodded slowly. "Yeah... sure."

There was a sudden, sharp knock at the door. Itsuki drew up his rifle and turned to the noise, steeling himself. I fumbled to equip my own, but before I could I heard the delicate sound of a girl saying, "It is me."

I sighed and looked to Koizumi. He seemed to sigh in relief as well as he opened the door and saw Nagato standing there, her Glock in hand. "You gave us quite the start," the esper said with a small noise that resembled a chuckle.

"I thought I told you to quit sneaking up on me," I added with a smirk as she walked inside.

Yuki's mouth opened to retort, but Itsuki cut her off. "What about Miss Suzumiya?" he asked urgently.

"She believes I required to utilize the house's restroom facilities," the alien answered promptly. "I am here to discuss our next course of action."

"Good," Koizumi said, returning his attention to me as he closed the door once more. "It's best if we all try to stay on the same wavelength."

I stood from my seat on the toilet and laid my gun down on the counter, giving my shoulders a rest. I motioned for Nagato to sit, and she glanced at me warily. Slowly, borderline hesitantly, she approached the seat I had given up and rested, laying her pistol on her lap as she sat.

I chose to sit on the edge of the bathtub, leaning over and resting my elbows on my knees as I waited for Koizumi to finish lecturing us.

"So first and foremost," Itsuki started, leaning on the sink behind him, his eyes switching between the two of us. "Let's make it very clear that Miss Suzumiya is our top priority. If any sort of danger befalls her..."

"The world is screwed," I finished for him.

"Yes," he affirmed, nodding grimly. "The world is screwed."

"Infection," Nagato spoke up, her voice quiet but her words powerful in the darkening room. "It is to be assumed that Miss Suzumiya's zombies possess the same attributes as the ones found in her favorite forms of media. By this logic, we must all remain sterile and avoid being bitten at all costs."

"And if we do get... bitten?" I chanced to ask.

Yuki Nagato stared into my eyes and analyzed me with her own, icy, golden gaze. "There are many possible outcomes in the event that one of us becomes infected. The one with the highest probability being death."

Whether it was death by bullets or 'zombification,' I didn't know or ask. "So don't get bit," I said, swallowing my fear. "Anything else?"

"I think that about covers the basics," the esper told me, shoving himself off of the sink. "But survival is only a temporary solution to a currently permanent problem..."

"Unless we can convince Miss Suzumiya to unravel the alternate timeline and either return to or merge with the original," Yuki supplied.

"And how do we do that?" I asked, sitting upright, crossing my arms over my chest. Suzumiya's melancholic face flashed in my mind's eye as I remembered sitting in the clubroom, playing othello and drinking tea. That felt like years ago now. "She's not exactly crazy about the original timeline, if you haven't noticed."

Nagato's eyes met mine and suddenly flickered like a branch of static wavering in front of a television program. She said nothing for a long while, only staring into my eyes with the intensity of two honey-yellow sundrops.

Koizumi was the one who broke the silence. "We'll definitely need to think on this later. In the meantime..." He cracked a wry version of his already irritating smile. "... Just keep surviving. I'm going to secure the perimeter and return to Miss Suzumiya. We'll talk later."

And with that, Itsuki took up his gun in his arms and left me and Nagato alone in my bathroom.

I turned to the purple-haired girl and watched her for a moment, her electric, yellow irises never-blinking as she stared back at me, her complex mind somewhere far away from here. "You're holding something back," I deduced.

Nagato eventually blinked, her eyes looking like they had turned back on after a long period of sleep when she looked at me.

"You're thinking about how to stop all this, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"You know a way to stop Haruhi's fantasy."

"Yes."

I leaned forward from my place on the edge of the bath, my eyes never leaving her face. Moonlight peppered with rain drizzled on the window behind her, painting Yuki's pale skin in a gray-blue pastel. "Nagato," I spoke in confidence, taking one of her small, white hands in mine. I squeezed her fingers gently in my palm. "You can tell me."

She looked down at my worn, battered hand, fascinated with the way it entrapped her own ghostly, flawless one. Then she looked at me.

Her silence reminded me that my heart had begun to beat faster, the pounding noise echoing in my ears as she said nothing and only stood to her full height, managing to rise only a head higher than my hunched form. Then she sat beside me on the end of the bathtub, her face not even inches away from mine. I gulped and tried to readjust myself on the seat so that our noses weren't touching.

"Uh-... N-Nagato, what are you-?"

"Your legs."

"My what?"

"You are injured. I am going to treat your wounds."

I flinched when she suddenly reached down and touched the back of my knee with her shockingly cold fingertips, the softness of her touch like velvet on my torn skin. I hissed in pain as she felt the bloodied area with her palm.

"This will hurt," she informed me before I suddenly felt my flesh reform on the back of my leg in a white-hot flurry of agony.

I cursed and found myself steadying my body against hers, grabbing her shoulder as she healed my injury without a word, calling upon some higher entity I couldn't understand as she did so.

"Your other leg," she commanded quietly, expression unchanging even when she glanced at the hand I had put on her shoulder. I blushed and released her as I brought my other knee to her area of effect, leaving a wrinkle in her black uniform where my knuckles had tensed-up.

She put both of her hands to work this time, almost massaging the gash with a touch like an angel's paintbrush as she stroked the wound and began the healing process once more. The sting of pain shot up my leg and to my core in a sharp sensation like a bullet breaking skin, and I cried out and lost my balance on the edge of the bath.

"Damn," I croaked, falling flat on my back and curling to match the shape of the empty tub, the back of my skull ringing with a dull pain from where I had smacked it on the porcelain. I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head to clear my spinning vision, blinking rapidly to somehow chase the shock away.

But my breath caught and my heart skipped a beat when I opened my eyes to see Yuki Nagato on top of me, her knees embedded in my stomach, her lips a hair's breadth away from mine, and her arms catching herself from coming any closer by pinning me down by my shoulders. Her moon-white skin was flawless in the glow of the night outside, her violet locks tickling my face as she locked eyes with me once more, her liquid-gold orbs melting into my own as she spoke.

"I apologize. I did not mean to cause you pain."

I wanted to say something romantic to pale, cute, little Yuki Nagato then, her voice soft and warm in my ears, but I couldn't find the words. I took in a short breath of much-needed oxygen and mustered a nervous smile underneath her tiny, dominating form.

"It's alright," I told her, reaching up and grabbing her by the shoulder with one free hand. I didn't push her away. "You just snuck up on me was all."

Her beautiful eyes flickered, and if Nagato possessed emotions, the one written on her brow now was frustration. "I did not."


End file.
